{"id":59743,"date":"2023-11-10T02:57:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T17:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/food\/2023\/nov\/09\/poor-tea-pickers-pay-the-price-for-a-british-cuppa"},"modified":"2023-11-10T02:57:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T17:57:11","slug":"poor-tea-pickers-pay-the-price-for-a-british-cuppa-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=59743","title":{"rendered":"Poor tea pickers pay the price for a British cuppa | Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sabita Banerji <\/strong>highlights the pitiful pay and conditions of tea plantation workers in response to an article about the high price of the brew <\/p>\n<p>While I empathise with Luke Turner\u2019s plea for tea, that most iconic \u201cBritish\u201d beverage, to be affordable to all (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/nov\/06\/tea-prices-museum-cafe-britain-biscuits-high-street-chains\">Why I\u2019m campaigning for the \u00a31 cuppa to be available all around Britain, 6 November<\/a>), I also beg him to consider the women and men (but mostly women) who pluck the leaves that produce it.<\/p>\n<p>The tea industry itself is a British phenomenon \u2013 its empire thrived on its vast international tea trade, powered by indentured labour trapped on plantations that were modelled on the cotton plantations of America. Sadly, many of those characteristics remain, and part of what is sustaining them is the low cost of tea. The price that producers are paid for processed tea leaves has remained static for decades (and has therefore plummeted in real terms), while production costs have risen \u2013 with a sharp spike driven by post-Covid inflation.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/food\/2023\/nov\/09\/poor-tea-pickers-pay-the-price-for-a-british-cuppa\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sabita Banerji highlights the pitiful pay and conditions of tea plantation workers in response to an article about the high price of the brew While I empathise with Luke Turner\u2019s plea for tea, that most iconic \u201cBritish\u201d beverage, to be affordable to al&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[311,1353,61,674,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-inequality-and-development","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-tea"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59744,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59743\/revisions\/59744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}